Rants and raves about the mess of higher education in the United States.

Thursday, April 12, 2018

Higher Ed Pay Skyrockets In Canada Too

By Professor Doom

So I’m finishing
up on an excellent article taking the entire Canadian higher education system
to task. The American system operates by essentially the same rules, however,
and Canada’s is merely a reflection of the incredibly corrupt system of their
much larger southern neighbor.

The last abuse
discussed in the article is administrative looting of the system. It’s little
different, of course, from what goes on in the U.S., only smaller in scale. For
American readers, you should increase the numbers given by around 40% to get an
idea of what even a tiny college is raking in from the taxpayers.

In 2011, David Johnston, president of the University of
Waterloo, made $1,041,881. [40] Indira Samarasekera of the University of Alberta had a
total compensation package of over $1.1 million in the final year of her
contract. [41]Elizabeth Cannon of the University of Calgary and David
Turpin of the University of Alberta banked $897,000 and $824,000 respectively
during the 2016–’17 academic year. [42] Even presidents at small- and medium-sized universities
now routinely receive between $300,000 and $500,000 in compensation, this not
including additional forms of remuneration that combined can reach as high as
$200,000 per year. [43]

The author paints in well-documented but broad strokes, so allow me to fill in an important missing
detail:

Administrators
greatly outnumber faculty, and the latter have seen their salaries actually
shrink over the years, especially as more and more faculty positions become
“part time” jobs, or at least are paid as much.

Yes, the person
at the top is making sickening amounts of money, and it’s even more repugnant
when you consider these guys gets perks like free cars, free jets, a free
mansion, a personal restaurant, an expense account greater all by itself more
than faculty pay, and all the other insane benefits that simply did not exist
before the student loan scam drowned our campuses in money.

But compounding
this putrescent pay is the legion, and I do mean legion, of
under-administrators infesting our campuses. Yes, I’ve seen a couple of
classrooms-buildings erected in my 30 years of teaching in higher ed…but I’ve
seen more administrative palaces built in the last 2 years than all the
classrooms-buildings of my career put together.

These palaces are
built from the ground up with luxury and beauty in mind, great glittering chateaus
built for the royal caste sucking up all that student loan money. Our campuses
are covered in these things, and each one is filled with functionaries, from
deanlings to vice-presidents of Diversity (oh so many of those!), and they, too
are paid handsomely, often with royal perks which, all by themselves, any
faculty would feel privileged to take in lieu of their usual adjunct pay.

After a lifetime
of teaching, my retirement package beyond money I was forced to invest (at
ridiculously poor returns) is typical: zero. It’s different for admin:

Peter George netted $1.4 million after leaving his position
at McMaster University, $99,999 annually, or one dollar less than the salary
limit prescribed by the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act (PSDA) so McMaster
wouldn’t have to reveal the amount publicly. [45] And this doesn’t include the tens of thousands of
dollars George received in additional compensation for insurance, health care,
car allowance, and travel — all after he’d resigned!

--emphasis added. Do note that even when these people quit,
they still get huge rewards.

In case the gentle
reader is wondering how a system could be so broken that saying “I quit this
job,” even quitting under a cloud of criminal accusations and obvious fraud,
could still merit a million dollars or more of bonus payments, the underlying concept
is called “best practices.” Honest, they justify the looting because of prior
looting…it’s just that simple.

…these packages don’t compare to the one received by Harvey
Weingarten, former president of the University of Calgary, who stands to collect
as much as $4.75 million in pension monies after serving as president for only
eight years. [46] The discovery of Weingarten’s remuneration package came
to light just as he was warning the University of Calgary community that up to
200 jobs would have to be cut in an effort to address a budget shortfall of $14
million.

The ostentatious
arrogance of the Poo Bah does nothing for my temper. The above is little
different than being told the school just doesn’t have the budget for the
$10,000 it would take to light up the parking lot so the students could feel
safe…then watching the $500,000 a year Poo Bah get into his $80,000 “perk” car
and go to his $1,000,000 home (mostly paid for by his annual $300,000 year
bonus for good growth), while the $100,000 a year dean and her $80,000 a year
assistant tells us all dozen faculty at the school have been denied our 1% pay
raises because no money, you see; and all five $100,000 a year HR people and
the $150,000 a year Vice President of Finance confirm the Dean is telling the
truth. Afterwards, the $250,000 Vice-Provost and his $80,000 secretary also
come in to confirm it. After the 3 pm meeting, we bump into the $120,000
Registrar and four of her co-workers whose titles we can’t guess coming back
from lunch at a place we all know about, but could never dream of having enough
money to eat there just because it's lunch time.

In a school with
only a couple thousand students on campus, by the way.

I’d like to conclude by addressing our university
administrators directly. So far I’ve written about you; now I want to talk to
you.

For laughs, the
author actually addresses the admin…you’ve got to be kidding me. Please
understand the numbers being quoted here are not pulled out of a hat…they’re
documented—these schools take government money, you see, and one of the many
government strings attached to that money is documentation of how it’s spent.

The first thing faculty expect from you is some honesty about
the situation. The data is in and all credible sources agree that our students
are in trouble and so too is our curriculum. We can’t get anywhere if you
continue to deny what’s actually happening. The university in this regard
increasing feels like a government in permanent damage control, where nary a
word against anything can be spoken and no admission of failure is permitted.
If you’d simply drop the facade we might be able to get somewhere.

Wow, asking for
honesty? Good luck with that. The primary reason these guys lie so blatantly is
because there’s nothing to stop them now. Addressing admin and asking them to
play nice accomplishes nothing.

On the other
hand, simply starving them out, by shutting down that student loan scam, will
get their attention far more effectively than polite requests to stop looting
so much.

I grant my
solution is as likely to occur as polite requests are as likely to be heeded,
at least in the near term. However, at some point, the money will stop flowing.

Finally, you must drop the childish and short-sighted
sidelining of sciences and humanities not obviously related to your commercial
interests…

The author then
goes on to ask for quite a few other things from admin, but this is just
extended idiocy. Admin holds all the cards, and these appeals are as pathetic
as those from the high school nerd begging for mercy as a bully pummels him
again and again…It’s not gonna happen, and so not worth further comment on my
part.

The comments are,
of course, quite supportive, but all neglect to point out the simple fact that
the solutions and appeals the author provides have zero chance of changing
anything on campus.

I assure the
reader: stop the flow of billions of dollars via the student loan scam, and
campuses will change very, very, quickly.